Browns set sights on Pioli, McDaniels

Tuesday

Cleveland gets permission to speak to the Pats’ director of player personnel about their open GM job. And McDaniels is high on their list of candidates to replace Romeo Crennel as head coach.

Open season on the New England Patriots’ staff has begun.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on Monday that Browns owner Randy Lerner has already asked for and received permission from the Patriots to talk to their executive vice president of player personnel, Scott Pioli, about his team’s vacant general manager’s job.

“Whatever happens, there’s league rules and policies for all those things and whatever they are we’ll comply with them,” Patriots head coach Bill Belichick said during his season-ending press conference at Gillette Stadium on Monday. “I’m not going to talk about somebody else’s job or somebody else’s situation. We’ll comply with the rules as they are as we always do.”

The Browns’ GM post opened when Phil Savage was fired after Sunday’s 31-0 loss in Pittsburgh dropped the team to 4-12.

In addition to expressing a desire to speak to Pioli about the Browns’ GM job, Lerner disclosed that Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels was on his list to replace Romeo Crennel as head coach of the Browns.

Crennel was dismissed on Monday, which proved to be a rather difficult day for former Patriots defensive coordinators.

Along with Crennel, who was fired after four seasons in Cleveland, Eric Mangini was dismissed on the heels of his third year with the New York Jets, one that resulted in a 9-7 finish that concluded with four losses in five games.

“It’s always tough,” Patriots defensive lineman Richard Seymour said. “Both of those guys were here and were our defensive coordinators. I think it’s obviously tough when you build or have a relationship with some of the coaches across the league and they’re fired, but it’s the nature of this business and it’s going to be us one day. That’s just the nature of the beast.”

Crennel, Mangini and Detroit Lions head coach Rod Marinelli all fell victim on what the NFL has come to know as “Black Monday.”

“I would just say having been in coaching for a long time, grown up in a coaching family, it’s something that I’ve unfortunately been a part of really my whole life, either in my family directly or with friends or associates at other teams,” said Belichick. “It’s kind of an annual thing at the end of the year and that’s part of a coach’s life. It’s part of the job.

“Most of us have been there at least once during the course of their career. I understand that’s part of it. It’s a tough day, I think, for all coaches when those things happen because we’ve all been a part of those in one way or another and you don’t like to see that happen to anybody, but you know it’s going to happen and it happens every year. It seems like it happens quite a bit some years and it looks like this is one of those years.”

Foes are known:

In addition to their annual games at home and away with their three AFC East rivals — the Miami Dolphins, New York Jets and Buffalo Bills — the Patriots will host Atlanta, Baltimore, Carolina, Jacksonville and Tennessee in Foxboro in 2009 and play on the road at Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, New Orleans and Tampa Bay.

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